Deadline passes for Mark Matelko to produce info requested by city officials

The 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline passed, and Menifee city officials did not receive the sludge records they requested from Planning Commissioner Mark Matelko. They do, however, have in hand a Fifth District Court of Appeal opinion that they believe affirms conclusions based on experts’ statements at a public workshop held earlier this month:

Menifee is a safe place to live.

“The deadline for Commissioner (Mark) Matelko to produce additional sludge records has come and gone,” Mayor Scott Mann said in an emailed statement. “The City of Menifee stands on the expert testimony provided at the city’s biosolids workshop on March 5. … As previously stated by several regulatory agencies and press accounts, the Menifee Valley is safe — your homes, schools and parks are safe and always have been.”

Matelko, however, publicly disputed those conclusions a week after that workshop when he said he and his wife, Janine — who have been vocal at City Hall on the issue for more than a decade — possessed records contradicting what the city presented to the public.

“The people are wondering why they are getting sick,” Matelko said from the dais at the March 12 Planning Commission meeting. “I think they need to start looking in their own backyard.”

With support last week from the City Council, Mann requested Matelko’s records pertaining to applications of sludge, aka biosolids — a mixture of human, household and industrial waste treated at a sewage plant for use on farmland as a fertilizer.

Although Matelko said he would not comment as to why he did not take his records to City Hall, he said he and his wife have attempted to provide the documents to previous city managers on numerous occasions, only to have them dismissed.

“I’m not happy, most definitely,” Matelko said of the events that have transpired since his comments at the commission meeting. “We were trying (to give the documents) to the city. They turned their back on us. Now it seems like political expedience that they take on a planning commissioner when they didn’t have the backbone to secure the truth (on their own).”

With or without Matelko’s records, Menifee officials believe a recent legal opinion supports their position.

In February, the Fifth District Court of Appeal upheld an injunction against a measure that would ban Los Angeles’ application of biosolids on Kern County land in an opinion that says “the proponents of Measure E insisted that land application of biosolids is dangerous, but the record in this case so far does not support that view.”

Although Los Angeles purchased the land in Kern County specifically for sludge application, City Attorney Julie Biggs said the opinion is applicable to Menifee.

“The Los Angeles case demonstrates the extent to which land application of Class A biosolids is an acceptable approach to disposal of sewage sludge,” Biggs stated in a letter to the City Council. “While no one in Menifee is arguing that current limitations on such applications should be lifted, the case highlights the fact that past land applications which have occurred pose virtually no threat to current inhabitants of the city who live near sites where such applications occurred more than 10 years ago.”